AIBU to be shocked at new survey re children and books?

[mrscoleridge]

New survey out seems to suggest that 4 million children do not have a book at home. AIBU to think this is completely unbelievable especially when cost is mentioned. I thought libraries were free and that you can pick up books for next to nothing on ebay/charity shops/second hand on Amazon etc. Our literacy rate is near the bottom of the table in Europe and no wonder; bet lots of theses households have Xbox and all that twaddle etc.

I know - I stopped going to the library for the same reasons as you - I had a hefty fine last time and I don't trust myself not to get another one. I don't go into town often enough.

When I was a child we used to go once a fortnight which was ideal but as a family we don't have a regular time to go so any chance of getting renewal routine going are slim.

I can afford to be lazy about it though as we have plenty of books at home and we are not reliant on the library as I was as a child.

4 million is too many. How many children aged 2-16 are there in the UK?

Survey actually spoke to "kids" age 8-17. 62% of the survey respondents were age 11-13. As for children age 8-17 there are about 7 million of them in total in UK.

The survey actually spoke to 18,141 kids, and media have done some extra extrapolations on top.

I'm looking at statements from the original report which aren't the same as things said here :

70% of respondents said that they owned their own books, but only 50% of age 14-17 said they have own books (so obviously something happens as they get older).
I cannot find the original 33 survey questions, (will search back thru thread for a link); the exact wording matters, no?

If 3/10 children age 8-17 don't own a book, and there are 7 million of them, that translates to 2.1 million. Still a lot, sure, but how are people extrapolating that to mean 4 million?

We're most a house full of boring medical related books here, my daughter (3yrs) was looking intently at my book of brain anatomy the other day (I'm studying psychology) and my OH is a pharmacy student (though he's a reluctant reader, won't read for pleasure at all). I think my OH detests my random book collection (mostly food and psychology musings), I've just ordered Keith Floyd on France from Amazon for 1p! (will try to hide this from OH, he'll have a face on him).

I think kids learn by example, my mum and dad loved books, though we were poor working class, my mum will read anything and writes poetry, my dad likes typical man books - crime and Terry Pratchett. So in our house, it was a normal activity, my sisters love reading also.

Alot of my old school friends won't have a single book in the house for themselves but have a lot of kids books... which is nice but I think as kids get older, they copy from the parents so perhaps in houses like these, they'll grow out of books?

Some of my younger children don't have their 'own' books but avidly read library books and books from their older siblings collections. Where would they fall in the survey?

What is the thing about 'owning' a book?
Surely it's more about access to reading material.

Not read the report so realise I could be way off the mark.

Thanks for all the lljkk - that porves what I thought. Statistics are so easy to manipulate and they can be made to sound like they show something entirely different to the actual findings.

Also, 18k kids is not many at all. they may heve picked them from a very narrow demographic whoch could have skewed the findings enormously.

wow ! no book at all ?
how does that happen ?

(twenty years experience working with children and still I'm shocked and surprised)

18,000 is actually a very large sample when you compare it to the pseudo-scientific claptrap statistics made up by cosmetics companies. You would struggle to find a larger-scale sample in a survey unless it were deliberately a mass-observation one.

We don't know any of these kids had no books. All we know is when asked they said they had no books. Not the same thing at all.

I agree with Indigo. I am not sure 9 to 11 year olds are reliable subjects. I think if ask 9 to 11 yr olds whether they have books they may well interpret the question in other ways like do you read at home? Do you have any books you like? They won't remember they have had in the past and grown out of. They may be library regulars but not consider those books as books from home because they are library books.

Clearly with literacy standards as they are some children aren't accessing reading materials enough (all reading materials, not just books) but I am not still not convinced about the survey results.

Sorry I say 9 to 11 yr olds because somebody down thread said they were the age sampled. I have just read the methodology of the report again and it is as lljkk says that the range is 8 to 14.

However, my point about children interpreting the question their way still stands. I don't think they make reliable subjects - the younger ones may not understand and the older ones may be trying to live up to some image they have of what their peers would expect them to say.

I work for Surestart and last year organised a sponsored read to raise funds for new books for the Centre. There are in excess of 150 families using our facilities - 3 children took part.

I really, really wish I could say I'm surprised by this survey .

Moshi monsters requires a huge amount of reading. As does facebook.

My kids do a huge amount of reading, and writing online.

So this survey really doesn't tell us anything at all about the reading habits of kids.

DumSpiro - people may not have participated because it was sponsored. Who did you expect to sponsor them? It was a fund raiser that failed. Still does not tell us anything about the reading habits of your families.

I'm not at all surprised by the results. The fact that I am a passionately bookish person is a total fluke for someone from my background. There were literally no books in my house when I was little apart from some almanac owned by my grandfather and my mother's prayerbook. My parents were typical of their class and generation in that they both left school at thirteen, and were themselves from houses with literally no books. Both had literacy difficulties - in fact I ended up more or less teaching my mother to read when I was eleven or so - and neither has ever really got beyond the 'scanning the local paper's headlines' stage of reading. To them reading is something you do in school, and the idea of leisure reading is something for 'the educated', and has always struck them both as a bit lazy.

Neither of my parents is quite sure how it happened, but someone noticed that the only thing that quieted me as a difficult toddler was being told stories. Someone clearly pointed them to the local library, and it ended up with me learning to read very early (because it was the only reliable way to be able to get at stories). But neither ever understood the value of re-reading favourites, or of owning your own books - plus they were a lot more expensive in the 1970s - and my mother especially hated to see me reading as a child because she thought it was 'lazy' and made me 'not like other children'. It would not have occurred to anyone in the extended family to give books as presents.

So I remain very much aware that I only discovered a love of books by accident, because the obvious thing for a child of that background would have been to grow up thinking reading was 'something from school', like your times tables.

My kids own very few books - they avidly read - using the library, or charity shop books which they read and return for resale... They would probably answer that they do not "own" books - I own most of them.....

the same survey said only 7% of kids in the age-group had never been to a library - imagine if the headline was the much more positive

"93% of children support their local libraries"

You can make statistics say ANYTHING you want them to.

Abput ten years ago, my sister worked as a TA in a school in a rough part of South London for a while. She used to l;isten to children read - many could not at age 6 -7.

She said that talking to some of their parents she used to ask if they ever read to their children or ever listened to them read. Some said they didnt - because they regarding teaching their kids to read was the school's job.

Am shocked by how many people are shocked! Have worked in number of inner city schools where children have never been read to by their parents or anyone in their families. It's cultural - if you grow up without books you are unlikely to read to your own children. HOWEVER, in my experience all children like stories (I think it's essential for their development, not just reading/writing).
If we put more emphasis on STORIES in school and less on "literacy" we would have a generation who may love reading for it's own sake and then would read STORIES to their own children.

and ANOTHER THING ....
libraries - closed and/or closing in this particularly 'rough' bit of South London (I mean, why would we need those antiquated old things when we've all got the internet haven't we?)
and while I am more than happy to spend money on books and eat vegetable soup, not so many of my neighbours are...

Indigo - it was a Readathon specifically designed for our 'market' - the result of which was that the money raised would be used for new books plus we would receive a percentage of free books as well. As the children are very young it was a case of sharing books, or reading very small amounts of whatever reading materials were available.

We have organised several free book lending/swapping events this year which have had similarly disappointing results in spite of being well publicised and made as user friendly as possible.

We have a half-termly book catalogue for families which does quite well but it tends to be the same names cropping up all the time on the order forms.

Sadly these examples are borne out by the numbers of children reaching our local high school barely able to read.

babymutha - I think you are absolutely right that we need to make stories about more than just words on paper to inspire children.

babymutha - i totally agree with you about concentrating on stories instead of literacy.
I run a bookshop, and it's soooooo much more vital to get the child interested in what's being said, rather than if they can read it.
I fully advocate audio books to this end - the parent doesn't even need to be in the room!
But listening to stories, whether they're from books or from memory is so important, maybe even more so than being able to read yourself - you can get a much wider vocabulary this way, and also have much better comprehension - you have to follow the story more closely when it's being told to you, to understand what's been happening, and work out what might happen next.
When you're (espcially a child who gets the mechanics early) reading the story. often you can get muddled up with wht the words say and don't even notice wht's happening in the story.

Dumspiro - how does a readathon work? Is it one of those things where you have to read so many books to gain sponsor money? If so, Indigo is correct in thinking that as it's sponsored a lot of people won't join in as it means finding sponsors. Also, some people think readathons are not a particularly good idea for getting children to read. If the children have 5 books to read they will be tempted to pick the easiest and quickest to read disregarding the content. Not a great way to get children interested in reading for its own sake.
Personally I think stories (as already mentioned) are the way to go. Eventually, they might want to read them for themselves if they find the stories interesting enough.

It was along the lines of this, but as we deal with pre-schoolers it was more of a listening/reading to thing, as much to raise awareness as anything. There was no stipulations as to how much had to be read or donated and we extended the time limit twice to try and get it going.

It really required very little effort and didn't have to involve any huge financial contribution so I was pretty at the almost total lack of interest. The 3 kids that did take part raised an amazing amount of money and the Centre really benefited in that sense, but personally I'd have rather seen every child take part and raise 50p each than just 3 take part and raise more.

I grew up with no family locally so often had to do sponsored events with the only sponsors being my mum and dad and they certainly couldn't afford to do it for much. TBH I really don't see why anyone would object to a sponsored event for something so worthwhile, but we're highly unlikely to be doing it again so it's a bit of a moot point really.

Yes children love stories and they are vital for building language skills as well as reading but you also need provide for those children who like to read/look at/discuss books about things that interest them too. There is always a significant section of children, particularly boys, aren't that bothered reading stories and want to look at non-fiction books. Focussing on stories alone would miss the opportunity of engaging those children in reading.

As will all teaching the key is differentiation, isn't it? Knowing what will work with each individual child to get the best out of them.

Gah! I proof read and there are still typos.

..... who aren't that interested in reading stories.

As with all teaching....

Not commenting directly on the survey here, other than to say, if that is true, how awful......books are so much easier to tidy up than tons of toys and computer games! Not to mention the effects on the child's intellectual development of course.
I do find that people seem to ignore books nowadays - seems that when I mention books for kids as presents, they seem to feel it's a very unusual or radical idea! Whether it's for my own or others' DCs.
Here's something else - my DN told me that he was putting on his uni application that his hobby was "reading". So I asked if he had anything more individual or unique to add, and discussed the sports and hobbies did. Subsequently, we talked about authors he had mentioned, and I asked what he thought of the ending of the book - he said "oh, I don't read the whole book. I never do. The school says we don't have to - they just pick out passages that we need to memorise." He's never read an entire Shakespeare play - not for the rude bits, not for the exam! Or a thriller! I could never have got away with that during my A levels. Or even GCSEs.